Epoxy resins have been used in various industrial fields such as adhesives, casting, encapsulation, lamination, molding, coatings, and insulation because of their excellent physical properties when cured and the ease of handling. Epoxy resins are generally categorized into a liquid type of which epoxy resins are liquid at ordinary temperature and a solid type of which epoxy resins are solid at ordinary temperature. Normally, such solid type epoxy resin is accommodated in an envelope type container in a powder or flaky form during the storage and the transportation. The solid type epoxy resin easily causes a phenomenon called “blocking” during the storage and the transportation due to its low molecular weight. The blocking is a phenomenon that particles of epoxy resin fuse and unite. The blocking leads to a serious handling problem that it becomes difficult to take out the resin from the container and to put the resin in another container for use.
In current years, in the use application of solid epoxy resins such as powder coatings or encapsulants for semiconductors, the trend is toward use of solid epoxy resins having further lower molecular weight for the purpose of improving the fluidity during molding. Accordingly, the above-mentioned blocking problem becomes increasingly serious.
Conventionally, the epoxy resin is therefore stored and transported at cool temperature in order to prevent the blocking, but there has been a problem of making the cost higher (“New Epoxy Resin” p 35-p36 written by Hiroshi Kakiuchi and issued by Shokodo Co., Ltd. May 30, 1988).
It is an object of the present invention to provide a granular epoxy resin which can exhibit excellent fluidity during molding because of its low melt viscosity and allows easy handling because it hardly causes blocking during storage and transportation, production method thereof, and a package thereof.